The Preservation Fund of Hillsborough sponsored the preservation and restoration of the Cadwallader Jones Law Office (also known as the Norwood-Jones Law Office) that is located on the courthouse square. Most law offices were of white-painted weatherboard, but this one is made of brick. There is simple woodwork inside that typically includes wainscoting, door and window frames, mantels, and sometimes, bookshelves. Heating came from a fireplace. Furniture consisted in most cases of a table, a few chairs, and perhaps a cabinet or desk. On the back of the brick structure is a chimney with an open fireplace. But does this fireplace facing outward suggest that another structure once was attached to the back of the office and the fireplace warmed an interior room? Or might this fireplace have warmed the hands and hearts of coachmen and clients who had come to see the lawyer and were waiting their turn under a primitive shed. The preservation and renovation took place in 1997-2001.

Hillsborough tradition has it that ice was harvested from the Eno River in the winter when it was frozen over. Nearby lakes and ponds were also a source of ice. However, all local ice was dependent on the coldest winter weather to produce ice thick enough to cut and store.

Another source of ice was from points north where colder locales shipped large blocks of ice. When the North Carolina Railroad opened in the middle of the nineteenth century, Hillsborough’s depot became a shipping destination for ice from up North.

One icehouse, owned by Paul Cameron, can be seen in the woods behind River Park Elementary School. The Great Burnside Icehouse was restored in 2002 by the Preservation Fund of Hillsborough, and is well documented and photographed.” Although a number of icehouses are known to have existed in Hillsborough, this is the only one that has been preserved and restored.

The Hughes Academy, a country schoolhouse, survives in its original form, if not its original location, just to the east of the town center, behind the present Orange County Board of Education building on Cameron Street. The Hughes Academy, built in around 1862 was named for Northern Orange County educator Samuel Wellwood Hughes; it was moved to Cameron Park from its original location near Cedar Grove, about five miles north of town on the west side of N.C. State Road 86 when it was threatened with demolition in 1997. The Preservation Fund of Hillsborough sponsored its moving and restoration. A frame building about thirty feet long by sixteen feet wide, with twelve-foot ceilings, it has a massive stone center chimney that divides the interior into two rooms; three large windows provide natural lighting to each of the rooms.

The Hughes Academy resembles countless rural one-or two-room schoolhouses that dotted the American landscape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; in fact, many of them operated well into the twentieth. Some have been repurposed, but most have disappeared.

When the remnants of the Confederate cabinet met to discuss surrender terms to present to General William T. Sherman, they gathered at the Alexander Dickson House, General Wade Hampton’s headquarters, in the small farm office just behind the main house. Both the house and office have been moved from the edge of town to Lot 46 in the center of town where they serve as the Orange County Visitors Center. The Preservation Fund of Hillsborough sponsored its moving and restoration in 1982-1984. The land on which it was placed was a gift from Helen and Dr. Charles Blake.

A small family cemetery sits near East Corbin Street, shaded by large trees and enclosed by a sturdy fence. There are no headstones, but it is known who is buried there: 19th century Black carpenter Joseph Nichols, his wife Harriet, and eight descendants. Today, the numerous descendants of the Nichols family are an integral part of the fabric of Hillsborough and beyond.

Joe Nichols was born into slavery, likely about 1822. He worked as a skilled carpenter during enslavement and was the head house carpenter for John Berry, the prominent Hillsborough builder responsible for the 1845 Orange County courthouse and other buildings in town and across the state. After emancipation, Nichols continued a long career as a carpenter, for Berry and other clients. He and Harriet raised six children, several brought into the family from Nichols’ previous marriages. They lived on two acres he purchased in 1869 in the Mars Hill neighborhood (named for the road which led to Mars Hill church a few miles north of town). The community included many skilled Black craftsmen who helped to build Hillsborough and the surrounding areas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Learn More About Nichols Cemetery

Dickerson Chapel’s storied history began in 1790 when it was built as the 3rd Orange County Courthouse on Courthouse Square. It was built as an unadorned wood building with large rectangular windows, constructed skillfully by black slaves and free people of color. After a new courthouse was built in 1841, Elias Dodson, a Baptist missionary, believed that the unused building could serve as a church. A philanthropist bought the building and a lot on behalf of the local white Baptists, but it needed to be moved to a new site. The building was placed on rollers and moved to its current location on the corner of Churton Street and East Queen Street. It is said that it took as many as 100 men, including slaves and free men of color, working eight days to move the building to its current location. Between 1841 and 1851 the building was used as a church by white Baptists until a new church was built. It was also used as a meeting place for abolitionists.

During the Civil War the building became a woodworking shop where furniture and coffins were made. With the genius of Job Berry, a respected black preacher, and with the help of funds raised by him, the building was sold in 1866 to the Philadelphia Society of Friends for the purpose of becoming a freedmen’s school. The building functioned as a school for black children and adults as well as the setting for religious services. Robert Fitzgerald, grandfather of Pauli Murray, taught school there during his early years in this area. In 1867, the newly ordained Rev. Job Berry and Rev. Billy Payne began holding church services for the recently formed African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. In 1886 the AME deacons purchased the property from the Philadelphia Society of Friends and named the structure Dickerson Chapel to honor William F. Dickerson, a bishop of the national AME church.

Since that time there have been many building additions and improvements:
1891: Tower and apse and cast iron bell added.
1947: Meeting room and kitchen added. Under the leadership of premier brick mason and entrepreneur Roosevelt Warner, brick masons who were also members of the church added brick veneer to the wood structure.
1986: Stained glass replaced plain glass windows.
Late 20th Century: Wooden floors covered with carpet, central heat and air conditioning added.
Early 21st Century: Original wooden pews were stabilized and refinished.
2023: Historic marker installed.

Perhaps there is no place with more profound influence upon the Civil Rights Movement than the black church. These spaces served as meeting places for blacks to air grievances and form strategic plans in hopes of achieving racial equity. During that tumultuous period in the 1950s and 1960s, Dickerson Chapel was one of many southern black churches which served as the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement.

Now it is time for this notable, but vulnerable structure, to be preserved and protected. Preservation Hillsborough, The Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, along with other organizations, the community’s black and Indigenous citizens, and generous individuals are collaborating with its owners to restore Dickerson Chapel AME Church. Please refer to the website preservationhillsborough.org for more information on how you can help.